Bogotá (Reprise)
June 11-12
From Salento, we flew back to Bogotá for a day before we were scheduled to return to Ecuador. Originally we hadn’t planned on spending any more time in Bogotá, but a dinner invitation from one of my grandfather’s former students caused us to change our plans. Claudia, who now teaches anthropology at the Universidad de los Andes in the center of Bogotá, was working on her PhD at Berkeley for the two years that my family and I lived in the Bay Area during my childhood. We had had lunch with her when we were in Bogotá before and she was warm, enthusiastic, and filled with stories about my family and her time in Berkeley. At lunch with us also was Jose, one of her masters students whose wife is in the City Planning masters program in Berkeley (talk about a small world!) Claudia had invited Selina and I, as well as Jose and his wife to dinner, and we were looking forward to a home-cooked meal in a Colombian home.
We arrived in Bogotá in the early afternoon, and spent the time exploring a new part of the city around our hostel. When it was time to go, our hostel called a cab for us (hailing cabs on the street in Bogotá is considered dangerous) and we were off to Claudia’s flat.
We arrived at modern high-rise building in a very posh neighborhood, and gave the building security guard Claudia’s name. A minute later, we got off the elevator and were greeted in the hall by her daughter, a wide-eyed 8 year old. (We later learned that she was wide eyed because Claudia had told her that I was VERY short!) The inside of Claudia’s flat was beautiful and warm, with rich wood everywhere. She poured us some wine and we were quickly immersed in a conversation about our travels, architecture, life in Colombia, and of course, Berkeley. Jose and his wife arrived a short time later and we enjoyed a nice dinner together.
Afterward, Jose invited us to a party in the north of Bogota that one of his artist friends was having. Although we were tired, we decided to take the opportunity to meet some more Colombians, and we spent the evening in his friend’s flat which had beautiful views of the city. When we arrived at the party, I was amazed at how quickly the conversation shifted to English, and how welcoming they were of the two foreigners. Quite a worldly bunch, there were two guys from Lima (who kept the party going with several bottles of Pisco which we drank straight), a hilarious guy who studied at Oxford but whose friends delighted in making fun of his terrible Colombian accent, several other guys who studied abroad in the US, and Jose and his wife. We left the party at 3 am, exhausted, but delighted that we had met so many new friends!
